Colonial Economics

Chen Yuan died suddenly while writing his doctoral thesis. When he opened his eyes again, he became a junior lecturer on Cangwu Star with a monthly salary of 120 credits. Cangwu Star, a habitable planet on the edge of the Milky Way, has been colonized for two hundred years. The five major interstellar powers divided up the concessions, and local compradors acted as lackeys. Ninety-five percent of the 1.5 Billion people were miners and farmers. The ore was dug out and sold for 12 credits, and then transferred to the concession for a price of 47 - no one could tell where the difference went. It's not taught in textbooks. Chen Yuan opened the lesson plans he had prepared and found that all real economics had been classified as "forbidden studies" by the great powers. The only things that can be taught to students are censored "business arithmetic" - addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, which is just enough for them to use, but not enough for them to think about. So he gave his first lecture within the framework of "safety". After class, a dozen students gathered around him with light in their eyes. Someone went to tell the truth. On the same day, he was blocked by a loan shark in an alley and was saved by a black market veteran with a kitchen knife. Under the dim light of the teahouse, he heard a piece of information for the first time - three concessions, three currencies, and the price difference for the same product can reach 30%. He didn't sleep that night. He wrote four words on the paper: cross-regional arbitrage. Basic concepts of Chapter 1 of game theory. When he was an academic in his previous life, he laughed at it for being too simple. But in this world, this may be his only starting point.